DEADLINES
If the location is one where the authorities control the food and water supply, and the terrorists
have limited numbers, time is on the government’s side. Then the authorities may simply seal the place,
prevent media coverage, and wait it out. They will certainly try to draw out negotiations, for example,
invoke the need to refer decisions to higher levels, and use salami tactics. The aim is to exhaust the
terrorists’ physical and mental stamina and to get a much better deal from them. The terrorists, who are
using a compellent threat, must impose a deadline. They can force the issue with limited violence: torture
or killing some hostages every day or hour. (Killing all the hostages is not rational, but irrationality or
brinkmanship may be used.) Terrorists’ violence runs the risk of invoking an irrational tough response
from the public or the government.
If the location is secret or under the terrorists’ or their sympathizers’ control, if the terrorists have
the advantage of numbers, control of food, and so on, and if the pressure on the government is great, then
the roles are reversed. The terrorists can wait patiently as the government makes concessions or deals.
BARGAINING PROCESS
The government can get a better bargain using counterthreats, for example, to bomb the terrorists’
camp or country. But then one terrorist group can get revenge on a rival group by acting using its name
and invoking such reaction against it.
Terrorists’ demands typically include publicity for their cause, release of their comrades from jail,
substantive political concessions, and always safe passage for themselves after the incident is over. They
hold several hostages. The package can then be split into a series of small steps, facilitating the buildup of
mutual confidence in the bargaining process. Thus some hostages (sick, elderly, women, children) can be
released in exchange for publicity or partial release of prisoners.
Similar bargaining can occur with kidnappers: the family of the victim can claim that its assets
are illiquid, so it can only meet part of the demand without excessive delay. The kidnappers can try to
force the issue by torturing or mutilating the victim, but they must periodically send out evidence that the
victim is alive.
DOUBLE-CROSSING
This can happen when the negotiations approach or reach an endgame. If there is a partial release
of hostages, the authorities can debrief them for information about the terrorists (their numbers, weapons,
state of mind), about the numbers and condition of the remaining hostages, and about the physical layout
of the location. This increases the chances of a successful rescue operation. Hostages who get out alive
can also help identify their holders for later arrest or trial. Therefore, it is in the mutual interest of the
terrorists and the hostages that the terrorists be masked or the victims blindfolded.
The problem of a double cross is at its most serious after the hostages are released and it only
remains for the government to fulfill its promise of safe passage to the terrorists. Should the government
renege and kill the terrorists or shoot down their escape plane? If the government does this, it might serve
to deter future hostage taking; however, if there is a positive probability that some fanatics will do similar
things in the future anyway, then this precedent will make it much harder to negotiate with them.
DISCUSSION TOPIC 2: STRATEGIES FOR POLITICAL PRISONERS
The first point to note is that, no matter how much you side with the political prisoners and hate
the authorities in these situations, you must coolly and objectively examine the strategic possibilities for
the authorities, too, if you are to devise the best strategies for the prisoners. That is the essen tial feature of
a game of strategy; you must analyze it by considering together the perspectives of all players. Mandela
recognizes this well; he says, “One must know the enemy’s purpose.” With this in mind, we list some
actions available to each side and some counterstrategies for the prisoners. The parentheses give the page
numbers where each action is mentioned in Mandela’s book.
Authorities’ Strategies
ISOLATION
Isolate the prisoners from one another and from the outside world (341).
(Mandela says the authorities’ failure to do this sowed the seeds of their eventual defeat. The same is
said to be true in other situations, for example, in India during the British rule and during the
“emergency” of 1975 to 1977.)
HUMILIATION
Enforcement of petty rules (343)
Required to wear short trousers (355, 359, 393)
Poor food, associated insults (342–343)
Provide bad news about family to provoke anger, depression (370)
(To counter these, the prisoners must know their legal rights—if any—and insist on their observance
(344–345). Measures listed below under “Preservation of Dignity” are also important.)
AGENT PROVOCATEURS
One instigated a false complaint to get Mandela’s support and then retracted to make him look bad
(355–357). This taught Mandela to be wary and may have saved his life.
Another offered an escape plot. This was really a secret police plot to kill Mandela while escaping; he
did not fall for it (398).
REWARD AND PUNISHMENT SCHEMES
A–D grading, with some privileges (347–348)
Charges, solitary confinement (361, 363)
Create divisions among prisoners or between prisoners and their colleagues outside (458, 465)
(To counter these, establishing leadership to maintain unity and discipline among prisoners is essential.
Must also anticipate fears of outside colleagues that the prisoners are being softened or turned by the
authorities and work to maintain communication to remove these fears.)
Prisoners’ Strategies
PRESERVATION OF DIGNITY
Regard prison as continuation of wider struggle (341, 360, 363); for Mandela this was the highest
priority.
Preserve sense of time (340)
Ongoing education, discussion (360, 374–375)
Not reveal any weakness that could be exploited; for example, do not show any emotions or eagerness
receiving letters or visits (349, 352)
Constant use of all available legal channels of protest and complaint even if they often don’t work
(345, 347, 372)
COMMUNICATION
With each other, during morning cleaning, work, showers, night (342–344, 366–367)
With outside world, visitors; receiving and sending news via lawyers (368); using secret codes (351,
368); newspapers (most important to political prisoners everywhere), receiving and reading (360–362,
374) or generating news coverage (346, 369), and most important during hunger strikes (369); complaints
to Red Cross (357–359) and to judges’ panel (401–402). (The public’s attention may be better held if
coverage is focused on a specific person such as Mandela, than on prisoners generally.)
CULTIVATING RELATIONS WITH INDIVIDUAL WARDENS
Recognizing and reciprocating occasional goodwill (365–366)
Willingness to reason and compromise (402–403)
Bribery and even blackmail (373–374)
EXPLOITING DIFFERENT OBJECTIVES AMONG AUTHORITIES
The South African apartheid government wanted to keep some pretense of legitimacy before the
international community. Therefore it
Allowed some visits by lawyers, family (maintain communication)
Preserved access to Red Cross, and so on (avenue of complaint)
Made physical torture or beatings less feasible or effective
Lent some effectiveness to hunger strikes (369)
(Contrast this to the Soviet Gulag or some other dictatorships.)
Higher officials will judge a prison warden by his ability to keep his prison trouble free, so a threat of
disobedience campaigns and disruption has some effect.
Can exploit divisions among guards; play them against each other.
DISCUSSION TOPIC 3: STRATEGIES IN DR. STRANGELOVE
Here are the main points that have emerged from our classroom discussions over the years.
Plan R
The reason for creating Plan R was that the U.S. nuclear deterrent was not credible in the sense
that killing the president would prevent a U.S. nuclear retaliation. This sense is different from the one
used in game theory; in game theory we would say that the nuclear deterrent was not credible if the U.S.
president, left free to choose after a Soviet attack, would not want to unleash retaliation. The difference is
between the ability and the will to act.
In strategic terms, the plan improved our second-strike capability—the ability to retaliate after
being subjected to a first strike. If both sides have better second-strike capability, the nuclear balance is
safer because neither has the temptation to launch a preemptive first strike and neither feels the need to do
so because of a perception or fear that the other side might launch a preemptive first strike. But the plan
seems to have been a secret; even the president was unaware of it. Its existence should have been better
publicized. Certainly the Soviets should have been informed, to make it clear to them that a sneak attack
that destroyed Washington and killed the president would gain them nothing.
The plan failed because it did not have effective safeguards to prevent a lower-echelon
commander from launching an uncalled-for attack; the plan was too risky. Any plan of this kind has a
trade-off between effectiveness and safety. Some less-risky versions of the plan include:
1. The authority to launch an attack rests with a group of military commanders, perhaps at different
bases, and, say, three out of five Go commands are needed. (Allowing any one of the five to give the Go
code is too unsafe; requiring unanimity is too ineffective.) Or the code could be in two or more parts.
Similar controls exist in some systems for the actual launching of missiles, where two people must turn
keys simultaneously.
2. The ability to issue the Go code could be conditioned on some objective event, for example, a
sufficiently high level of radiation in the United States.
3. The planes could be required to obtain confirmation of the Go code from a different base than the
one that issued the initial order.
4. Automatic instead of human pilots could be used. But these would have been less effective in real
war; they would not have saved the plane with heroics after the missile attack.
To allow the president to retrieve the situation after an unprovoked launch of Plan R, there could
be an overriding recall code or a second radio receiver controlled directly from the Pentagon. The risk of
destruction of the plane’s receiver circuits could be handled by requiring that the mission be aborted if the
CRM-114 is not functional. But this may err on the side of too little effectiveness; the mission may be
essential to the United States.
The Soviet Union actually had something very like Plan R but with various human and
mechanical safeguards. It was (wrongly) called “Russia’s Doomsday Machine” (Bruce G. Blair, New York
Times, October 10, 1993, Section A, p.35).
General Ripper’s Attack
To commit the United States to his attack, Ripper “hijacked” several elements of Plan R itself: (1)
he sealed off the base, cut off communications, and impounded radios; (2) he sent a phone message and
was then unavailable for further discussions or questions; (3) he sent the Go code when the planes were
already at fail-safe so they would not need a further authorization; and (4) he kept the recall code secret
and finally killed himself (the ultimate irreversible commitment) rather than risk revealing it under
torture.
He put the president and the general staffs under great time pressure and reckoned that it would
compel them to back him up with an all-out attack. In the War Room meeting, General Turgidson
supported this course of action, as it would yield a less bad postwar environment: “only” 10 to 20 million
dead.
Flaws in Ripper’s strategy: (1) he did not reckon that the president would refuse to launch an
all-out attack and would instead contact the Soviet premier and even help the Soviets shoot down the
planes, (2) the base was not perfectly sealed: Mandrake discovered a working radio playing music and
later a pay phone (and a Coke machine to supply coins!), (3) the base defenses were overcome very
quickly, and (4) Ripper’s obsessive doodling enabled Mandrake to guess the recall code.
The Doomsday Machine
Its important features:
1. It threatened a very dire consequence, namely destruction of all human and animal life on
earth, to serve as a deterrent.
2. It was automatic, making it credible as a commitment to actions that “no sane man would
take.” Its crucial flaw: it was kept a secret. The Soviets should not only have announced it as soon as it
was operational but also have invited U.S. officials to inspect it.
Would this have deterred Ripper? If he was truly concerned about the purity of the U.S. people’s
precious bodily fluids, he would not have wanted them to be destroyed by radioactivity. But if this was
just a symptom of some underlying psychosis, who knows what he might have done.
Given the risk of errors, the doomsday machine is too large a threat. Besides the error that
occurred in the movie, such a machine might be triggered by mistake (or a runaway computer as in the
movie War Games) or by a “very small” attack. It might also prove too unpopular with the U.S. public.
For such reasons the United States had decided not to build such a device.
A doomsday machine could be made safer by programming it to react only to a “large enough”
attack, but that would make it vulnerable to salami tactics—repeated attacks each of which is too small to
trigger it. The machine could be made probabilistic like Russian roulette, but this concept might be too
difficult to explain to the public or even to the opposing military chiefs. But if the machine can be
overridden by a human, its crucial automatic nature is lost.
A country might announce that it has a doomsday machine without actually building one. It could
even construct the appearances—computers, and so on—but leave out the actual bombs. This might be a
very effective deterrent. But in the United States there might be adverse public reaction. Moreover, if, say,
an investigative reporter found out the truth that might jeopardize the credibility of the real deterrents.
The Phone Conversation
President Merkin Muffley used various devices to convince Premier Kissoff that he was sincere
and was not launching a massive attack:
1. He brought the Soviet ambassador into the highly confidential War Room, showed him the full
situation, and had him talk to the premier first.
2. He pointed out that if he had meant to launch a sneak attack, he would have done so without
calling first, so the very act of making the phone call was an assurance of good intentions: “If it wasn’t a
friendly call, you would never even have got it.” (Incidentally, this is one of the few nonartificial exam –
ples known to us of forward induction, where your past actions are credible signals of your future
intentions.)
3. The Soviets’ trust was reinforced when the locations of the planes were correctly revealed:
some were shot down, and others were recalled.
All of this was defeated by the cowboy pilot’s initiative, namely his decision to bomb an
alternative target. Possible ways of avoiding this risk:
1. Have a general rule that the bomb cannot be dropped other than on the specified primary or
secondary targets.
2. Do not give the pilot the coordinates of any other targets. In the movie he could have gotten those
from the profile envelopes for all the other attack plans, but these days one could transmit the plans
electronically very fast with the initial Go order itself.
3. The Soviets should not have focused all their forces on that one location, to guard against just such a
mishap or, even more important, against deliberate U.S. cheating.
4. There could be a device located in each plane to destroy it in just such an emergency on an
electronic command from the United States. But if the Soviets found out the destruction signal, they
would have a surefire defense. Also, the knowledge that such a device existed would seriously lower the
morale of U.S. aircrews. Again, there is a trade-off between risk and effectiveness, and there is no ideal
solution.
DISCUSSION TOPIC 4: STRATEGY IN MOVIES USING
INDIVIDUAL SCENES
Many movies have scenes that deal with the question of how to get some vital information that only your
adversary possesses, since he knows that the threat of killing him is not credible. The situation plays out
differently in A High Wind in Jamaica, Crimson Tide, The Maltese Falcon, and The Gods Must Be Crazy.
You can show excerpts from all four, and then hold a discussion to compare and contrast them.
In A High Wind in Jamaica, the pirate captain Chavez (the information seeker) simply gives up.
In Crimson Tide, the U.S. Navy submarine captain Ramsey threatens to kill a coconspirator of the person
who has the crucial firing codes for the submarine’s missiles, and this works. The conspiracy was an
attempt to prevent the start of a possibly unnecessary nuclear war in which millions would die, but it is
interesting that the immediate death of someone you know can weigh more in your calculation than
abstract megadeaths.
In The Maltese Falcon, the hero, Samuel Spade (played by Humphrey Bogart), is the only person
who knows where the priceless gem-studded falcon is hidden, and the chief villain Caspar Gutman
(Sydney Greenstreet) is threatening him for this information. This produces a classic exchange, here cited
from the book (Hammett 1929) but reproduced almost verbatim in the movie.
Spade flung his words out with a brutal sort of carelessness that gave them more
weight than they could have got from dramatic emphasis or from loudness. “If you kill me,
how are you going to get the bird? If I know you can’t afford to kill me till you have it, how
are you going to scare me into giving it to you?”
Gutman cocked his head to the left and considered these questions. His eyes
twinkled between puckered lids. Presently he gave his genial answer: “Well, sir, there are
other means of persuasion besides killing and threatening to kill.”
“Sure,” Spade agreed. “but they’re not much good unless the threat of death is
behind them to hold the victim down. See what I mean? If you try something I don’t like I
won’t stand for it. I’ll make it a matter of your having to call it off or kill me, knowing you
can’t afford to kill me.”
“I see what you mean.” Gutman chuckled. “That is an attitude, sir, that calls for the
most delicate judgment on both sides, because, as you know, sir, men are likely to forget in
the heat of action where their best interests lie and let their emotions carry them away.”
The class discussion can explore the nature of these strategies. The scene can be seen as an
example of Schelling’s idea of the (strategic) rationality of (seeming) irrationality. (See Schelling’s
Strategy of Conflict, 1960, pp. 17–18.) Gutman is making his threat credible by pointing out that he may
act irrationally. But it is better seen as an example of the dynamic game of brinkmanship (Schelling’s
Strategy of Conflict, ch. 8; Arms and Influence, ch. 3). Both parties by persisting in their actions—
Gutman in his torture, and Spade in his defiance—are raising the risk that Gutman may get mad and do
something against his own rational interest. Each is exploring the risk tolerance of the other, in the hope
that it is lower than his own risk tolerance so that the other will “blink first.” (We present a more formal
analysis of these issues in Chapter 14.)
A scene from The Gods Must Be Crazy makes this escalation of risk more explicit. An
assassination attempt on the dictator of an African country has failed, and one of the team of gunmen has
been captured. He is being interrogated for the location of the group’s headquarters and the leader. The
scene is the inside of a helicopter. The blindfolded gunman is standing with his back to the open door.
Above the noise of the rotors, the army officer questions the gunman a couple of times and gets only
shakes of the head. Then he simply pushes the gunman out the door. The scene switches to the outside of
the helicopter, which we now see is just barely hovering above the ground, and the gunman has fallen six
feet on to his back. The army officer appears at the door and says, “The next time it will be a little bit
higher.”